1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to transportation systems, and more specifically to elevator systems served by people mover apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An elevator system for a building having a plurality of elevator cars conventionally includes group supervisory control for directing the elevator cars to serve the traffic in an orderly, efficient manner. Normally, the group supervisory control attempts to provide a balanced type of service for the building, dividing its efforts substantially equally between serving the main floor or lobby, serving up hall calls, and serving down hall calls. The group supervisory control also will include other operating strategies triggered by actual system conditions, which temporarily modify the balanced strategy. For example, an elevator car leaving the main floor with a passenger load which exceeds a predetermined value, may trigger an up peak mode or strategy. Such a traffic peak may occur in the morning, when the building is initially populated, and also at the termination of the lunch hour. The up peak mode, for example, may attempt to maintain a predetermined quota of elevator cars at the main floor, and place restrictions upon when an elevator car can become available for serving other types of system demands.
A down traveling car which starts to bypass down hall calls because of the passenger load reaching a predetermined value may trigger a down peak mode or strategy. Such a down traffic peak may occur at the start of the lunch hour, and also when the building is depopulated at the end of the work day. The down peak mode, for example, may eliminate any main floor quota and immediately assign each elevator car as it becomes available to a predetermined down call. When the highest down call has been assigned, for example, subsequent available cars may be assigned to the middle down call of the remaining unassigned down calls.